I asked this about a year ago and the position was that Sun was not going to start up a dedicated game development company, or buy one, preferring to let us struggle away for ourselves. It was noted at the time that M$ have done exactly the opposite, and now have XBox and a clutch of top-rate development houses under their wing, and XBox 2 on the horizon, whilst we wait for the PS2 to get a slow Java implementation and play Snake in J2ME (ok, it's progressed slightly).

We have to be fair and realise that it's a very risky business incubating game startups, but M$ have an order of magnitude more cash to throw at this sort of thing until it succeeds, and Sun are mainly just keeping properly afloat without undue risks.

Anyway, I still think that it could be wise for Sun to at least do some structuring on the game efforts out there. This could be accomplished e.g. by offering some free webspace/server capacity, bc. IMHO online gaming still is the most promising part of the Java gaming issue.

A central place to lookup Java games could help to make them more popular. In case one of them turned out to be a killer app (you never know!!), this would be of great benefit for Sun itself and the rest of the community.

Well, to be fair, MSFT ALSO has msot of the game industry at odds with them because they chose to compete with everyone at once. (The game authors through their software line, the peripheral makers through their joystuicks et al, and now the consoel makers with XBox.)

There is a perception that they have an attiude of "We're Microsoft, we don't need friends" and they may be right. We OTOH would rather NOT compete with everyone. That doesn't mean however that Sun might not consider partnering with companies in the industry where it made clear economic sense.

Got a question about Java and game programming? Just new to the Java Game Development Community? Try my FAQ. Its likely you'll learn something!

You answered the question: IBM will manufacture the chips. They have the ability to do chip fabrication. Remember what happened to Sony when they pumped $1+B into their own fabrication facility. They discovered that they were not REALLY processor manufacturers and, as a result of that inexperience, the average cost of a PS2 at launch in the US was around $1200.

Remember that the hardware, while forward thinking and cutting edge, is also a commodity. As such, manu cost is paramount. Hmmm....I wonder how much money IBM will be making on all of those chips. Ask SGI about N64.....oops!

-Chris

P.S. One other thing, the chipsets are being developed by Toshiba and IBM

I'm still of a mind that there is a market for Sparc-powered consoles, perhaps running a lightweight Linux and Java and with a little ATI magic doing the stunts.

I'd be wary if it were actually Sun who produced it - not a great idea - but I can't think of a better way to sell a million obsolete Sparcs. The JVM on Sparc is very mature, after all. Ideal. The only trick would be fast native GL drivers on Sparc - I've no idea what the performance is on that platform but it would have to compete with XBox.

What I would really appreciate is some kind of home computer based on this system. Like a C64 or Amiga - switch it on, it does its thing. Program it using a built-in Java IDE perhaps. Something you can play with to learn. The market's still there, it's still massive, and it's entirely empty since the last Amiga/ST vanished from the world.

I've even downloaded and tried SavaJe on the iPaq I'm using at work! I was impressed apart from a couple of minor niggles - it's a PDA, and therefore useless , and it's got no 3D hardware in it. Nor floating point - boo! Nor is it fast by any lenient definition of the term.

But they're on the right track as far as O/S design goes for PDAs... but it ain't no Amiga replacement, that's for sure.

well, jx seems to be a nice project. the idea to have a jvm running with no underlying OS is very interesting. i always wished that already exists. will take care in watching this from time to time.Thanks for the link..Going back to sleep mode.

The best reason to strategicially partner with Sun, but not neccesarily wait for them to incubate game developers, is because they are a big company with lots of business connections, and they can sometimes make things happen faster or or in a bigger way (not always better) then we little guys can.

For example, where would Java be if Sun hadn't developed it and promoted it and continued to give it away for free to everybody?

They also have, so I hear, a big compatibility testing lab which they are willing to let independent developers leverage for testing.

But they are not, and probably never will be, a game publisher like Electronic Arts, or Sony Online Entertainmen, that funds their own internal game projects.

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